How hes defining likely voters right now: For the most part were polling likely voters. Its a loose screen. We keep people who say theyre only somewhat likely to vote. But the vast majority say that they are definitely or very likely to vote. Theyre voting.

How campaigns try to sway polling results: In a close race, the operatives are trying to manipulate the turnout through their paid and earned media. The earned media includes lobbying and trying to skew the public polls. Historically the most egregious case was the 2000 Gore campaigns lobbying the networks exit pollsters for an early, and wrong, call in Florida. This suppressed the Florida Panhandle and Western state turnout. (Polls close at different times in different parts of the state, because the state stretches into two time zones.) In our post-election Florida poll, we found that thousands of Panhandle Floridians heard the call and although their polls were still open for an hour in a close national race decided not to vote. Panhandle voters went two-to-one for Bush. The CBS early wrong call nearly triggered a national crisis.

On what a realistic partisan breakdown would look like: The 2004 national exit polls showed an even partisan turnout and Bush won 5148. Had it been the +4 Democratic edge of 2000, John Kerry would have been president. 2008 was a Democratic wave that gave them a +7 partisan advantage. 2010 was a Republican edge. Theres no wave right now. There are about a dozen swing states where in total millions of voters who voted in 2008 for Obama are gone or have not voted since. There are also hundreds of thousands of voters in each of several swing states like Ohio, Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, and others who voted from rural, exurban or suburban areas in 2004 for Bush who did not vote in 2008, because they were not excited by McCain or thought he would lose. They are currently planning to vote mainly as a vote against President Obama.

What Obama and his allies are doing now: The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting. So they lobby the pollsters to weight their surveys to emulate the 2008 Democrat-heavy models. They are lobbying them now to affect early voting. IVR [Interactive Voice Response] polls are heavily weighted. You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are not enthusiastic to vote or non-voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. The intended effect is to suppress Republican turnout through media polling bias. Well see a lot more of this. Then theres the debate between calling off a random-digit dial of phone exchanges vs. a known sample of actual registered voters. Most polls favoring Obama are random and not off the actual voter list. Thats too expensive for some pollsters.

“The Democrats want to convince [these anti-Obama voters] falsely that Romney will lose to discourage them from voting”

I also see this happening in the blogsphere on random websites, once conservative comments are now being drowned out by libs. I can imagine an army of geeks sitting in a sweaty room banging on the keyboards - “liking” each others posts.

John McLaughlin - " You can weight to whatever result you want. Some polls have included sizable segments of voters who say they are not enthusiastic to vote or non-voters to dilute Republicans. Major pollsters have samples with Republican affiliation in the 20 to 30 percent range, at such low levels not seen since the 1960s in states like Virginia, Florida, North Carolina and which then place Obama ahead. "

McLaughlin is seeing what we are seeing. It's too bad some of us easily get confused and feel defeated by the Dem bull.

Democratic pollster Peter Hart and Republican pollster Bill McInturff conducted the NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey and isolated the respondents whom they classified as up for grabs  either undecided or leaning only slightly to one of the candidates. Several demographic indicators suggest that the remaining voters are ripe for the picking for Romney: 68 percent are white, 57 percent are married, 53 percent are men, 70 percent think the country is headed in the wrong direction, and 60 percent disapprove of how Obama is doing his job.

(snip)

What tends to happen is the vote decision is driven by two things, McInturff said. Your feeling about the direction of the country  where 70 percent say the country is on the wrong track  and their feelings about the presidents performance, which is very negative. I dont think Romney will get 100 percent of this vote, but I do think a chunk will vote and they will disproportionately break to Romney.

(snip)
Just about any Republican presidential candidate would be thrilled to face an election where victory comes down to persuading white married voters who think the country is on the wrong track and the Democratic incumbent is disappointing to vote for him.

Four years of Axelrod threatening and eliminating media people who would threaten his 2012 reelection psych ops strategy and look what we get.

I wonder how many difficult /honest media were destroyed by Axelrod and Team Obama to get total obedience you see now. I give credit to Fox for firing Major Garret after he was seen attending Axelrod birthdays and private parties. But evil Axelrod found him a spot to spread their lies at the left wing National Journal, a subsidiary of the WH PR machine.

In 1992 when there was only CNN and the alphabet networks, Ross Perot was at 31% and Clinton and Bush were in the high 20s. Overnight it flipped and Perot slipped down to something like 26%. Perot’s campaign manager called CNN and they told him they stopped counting people who did not vote in the last election whether they were voting in 1992 or not. Bottom line is a big chunk of Perot’s support was from people who didn’t intend to vote until he got in. Now CNN wasn’t counting them.

This is not an argument for or against Perot. What I’m pointing out is this was happening in 1992. The media folks who do the polls are make them come out the way they want them to. And sadly, probably 20% of the voters want to pick a winner so they go with the polls.

20
posted on 09/22/2012 9:49:27 PM PDT
by Terry Mross
(The Clintons seem to be very afraid of obama. Do they owe him their souls?)

It was used by all the Clintonistas during the Vince Foster “suicide” investigation as an excuse for all the fishy phone calls between white house staff on the night he died. They were “reaching out” to each other.

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